Mission statements have a bad rap. Occasionally they deserve it, and that is a shame because, like all thoughtfully crafted words, they have the power to motivate and inspire.

“Campus Compact advances the public purposes of colleges and universities by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility.”

Our deeply-felt conviction is that within higher education, civic engagement is a fundamental tool for transforming learning and communities. We believe it is a key strategy for increasing student access and enhancing student success.

Our mission comes to life through work with our member campuses to:

• Embed academic and co-curricular practices that cultivate the skills, knowledge, and values of civic engagement in our students.
• Engage faculty in community-based teaching and scholarship focused on societal concerns.
• Forge collaborative community/campus partnerships to strengthen communities and education.
• Advance higher education’s leadership in addressing critical issues and strengthen democracy at the local and national level…

>>Read the Full Article at: Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities

INDIANAPOLIS, AUGUST 10, 2010– Indiana Campus Compact (ICC) received $25,404 from the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives and the Corporation for National and Community Service to fund its new AmeriCorps Education Award program, the Service Engagement Corps (SE Corps).  The program will mobilize 150 college students, from 13 ICC member campuses, to become AmeriCorps members who will provide intensive service to meet critical community needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment.

ICC member campus host sites for the 2010-2011 SE Corps program are: Anderson University, Ball State University, Butler University, Indiana University Bloomington, IPFW, IUPUI, Ivy Tech Community College – Bloomington, Ivy Tech Community College- Central Indiana, Marian University, Purdue University North Central, Taylor University, University of Indianapolis, and the University of Southern Indiana.

Students who complete 300 hours of service are eligible to receive a $1,132 AmeriCorps Education Award at the end of their service. Those awards can be used to repay qualified student loans or to pay the cost of attending a qualified institution of higher education.

SE Corps members will address the needs of the state of Indiana through various community service and leadership projects, while building relationships between higher education institutions and local community organizations. During their year of service, SE Corps members will promote community involvement, service, and civic engagement on and off campus with the goals of increasing the number of college students engaged in service throughout the state of Indiana, and strengthening campus-community relationships and collaboration by initiating new and enhancing existing partnerships. In addition to playing an important role in making a difference in their communities, SE Corps members will gain valuable civic and workforce skills.

Through participating in the SE Corps program, members become a part of the AmeriCorps national service network of improving lives and strengthening communities throughout the United States of America. AmeriCorps is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency whose mission is to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering.

Indiana Campus Compact (ICC) is a network of 42 college campuses that supports higher education’s efforts to develop students into well-informed, engaged citizens. Providing programs, services, and resources, ICC serves as a catalyst for campuses and communities to improve people’s lives through service-learning and civic engagement initiatives. For more information, visit www.indianacampuscompact.org

The President of the University of San Francisco shares his views on higher education’s
public service role – the opportunities, the challenges and his personal commitment.

…YSU’s Center for Nonprofit Leadership, housed in the Williamson College of Business Administration, received the grant funding from the Ohio Campus Compact to participate in the Pay It Forward program. The program helps students learn how to be engaged citizens and to understand the important role philanthropy plays in the health of local communities…

>>Read the Full Article at: Vindy.com

WMU’s renowned Seita Scholars Program, which focuses on providing scholarship funding and a campus support structure for former foster care youth, is serving as the host for a summer camp for 22 high school juniors and seniors who are in foster care. The campers are being guided by WMU Seita Scholars who act as counselors for the two-and-one-half day camp that began Tuesday, July 27. The camp is designed to brief the younger students on how to prepare for college and is funded through a grant from the Speckhard-Knight Charitable Foundation of Ann Arbor, Mich…

…The program has tapped the cooperation of state officials in the Michigan Department of Human Services and has attracted national media attention and the financial support of private citizens and state, local and national organizations, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation, Guido A. and Elizabeth H. Binda Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, AT&T Foundation and the Michigan Campus Compact.

>>Read the Full Article at: WMU News

…At the end of the course, the students were able to vote on which agencies they believed would be best served by receiving money from a “Paying It Forward” grant, sponsored by the University of Cincinnati, in collaboration with Ohio Campus Compact. Wallace’s class voted to award three area non-profits $1,500 each…

>>Read the Full Article at: The Cincinnati Enquirer

…According to Campus Compact, a collation of college and university presidents that promote civic engagement and service learning, there are more than 100 college and business schools in the US offering courses about philanthropy that involve students as grant makers.

The courses reinforce skills such as teamwork, empathy, rigorous thinking, communication and group decision-making, says Maggie Grove, a consultant at Campus Compact, based in Boston. But most importantly the classes dispel the notion that “to be a philanthropist you have to be a person of great wealth”, she says. “These courses are broadening the definition of philanthropy and helping people perceive themselves as active and engaged citizens…”

>> Read the Full Article at: The Financial Times

>>Read the Full Interview Here

*For more information visit: California Campus Compact

San Francisco, CA – California Campus Compact announced today that California State University, Monterey Bay and University of California, San Diego have been awarded grants of $10,000 each for students on their campuses to participate in the second phase of California Campus Compact’s Social Innovation Generation: Student Leadership Initiative. Social Innovation Generation: Student Leadership Initiative encourages and supports change-making student-led service and service-learning projects that will not only aid those hardest hit by California’s economic crisis, but also help California emerge from the crisis with a more innovative, green and sustainable economic future…

>>Read the Full Release Here

…Jin Joo McClendon, HAVA program coordinator, said the program’s initiatives include recruitment, training and supporting college poll workers to assist local election commissions leading up to the Nov. 2 general election…

>>Read the Full Article at: WDAM-TV

>>Read the Full Article at: BusinessNorth.com

YSU’s Center for Nonprofit Leadership, housed in the Williamson College of Business Administration, received $15,500 in grant funding from the Ohio Campus Compact to participate in the program, which helps students learn how to be engaged citizens and understand the important role philanthropy plays in the health of local communities…

>>Read the Full Article at: Youngstown Business Journal

>>Read the Full Release Here

…Why I do what I do: I have the opportunity to work with amazing people who are facilitating student learning in ways that both deepen their students’ education and improve the quality of community life…

…What Iowa can do to attract more people like me: The communities across the state need to teach our brightest students that being successful doesn’t have to mean leaving. We need to show them how staying is successful.
My leadership philosophy: Work is a team effort with each person understanding his or her role and expectations. Leaders contribute, but also facilitate the team’s work and growth…

>>Read the Full Article at: The Des Moines Register

Do more, spend less. That harsh imperative confronts leaders in a variety of institutions today — none more than those at Minnesota’s colleges and universities, both public and private. Tight money is erasing many line items deemed nonessential from higher education budgets.

But remaining and in many places flourishing despite several rounds of retrenchment is community involvement, dubbed “service learning” when it emerged as a national collegiate trend a quarter-century ago. Evidently, and to their credit, educators have decided that mingling practical local problem-solving with higher learning is more than a fad. In fact, it might be a remedy for some of the ills of tight money, on and off campus.

That was the testimony of many of the 10 Minnesota college presidents who gathered for conversation during last week’s annual summit of Minnesota Campus Compact. The Compact is a 25-year-old organization that binds some 47 Minnesota colleges and universities with a pledge to bring campus resources to bear on improving the lot of their neighboring communities…

>>Read the Full Article at: The Star Tribune
]]> http://www.compact.org/news/editorial-service-learning/11888/feed/ 0 http://www.compact.org/news/college-knowledge-usm/11884/ http://www.compact.org/news/college-knowledge-usm/11884/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:12:07 +0000 Mark Este http://www.compact.org/?p=11884 The University of Southern Mississippi’s Mississippi Campus Compact has partnered with the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning to administer the College Knowledge Project.

The College Knowledge Project is a college access initiative of the IHL designed to increase early awareness of post secondary education and career pathways for Mississippi students and their families. It is funded by the College Access Challenge Grant…

>>Read the Full Article at: WDAM – News 7

“He has created programs that have endured and he has continued to work with the same community partners for over 20 years” (Dewar, 2010).

Colleagues commented that Dr. Checkoway’s name is synonymous with service-learning and community-based programs at the University of Michigan. Dr. Checkoway has been instrumental in affecting transformative change for the University of Michigan in the development of the Ginsberg Center and infusing civic-engagement at all levels of the university.

Checkoway also leads by example; he has designed and continues to teach highly engaged courses for undergraduates by developing reciprocal benefits for the students, the university and the community.  As a passionate leader for social justice issues, he created partnerships in Detroit, one of the nation’s poorest cities and most segregated populations.  Dr. Checkoway developed relationships within the community that lead to the placement of over 800 AmeriCorps members over the past 15 years.

Dr. Checkoway has been a change agent, a teacher, and a leader for community collaborations.  We are proud to name him as the winner of the 2010 Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award.

We would also like to congratulate our four finalists:

• Joan Francioni, PhD – Director, Center for Engaged Teaching and Scholarship, Winona State University, Winona, MN
• Judith Liu, PhD – Professor, Department of Sociology, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA
• Edward Lorenz, PhD – Chair, History Director, Public Affairs, Alma College, Alma MI
• Nancy Orel, PhD – Associate Professor, Director of Gerontology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH

The report, released today by the Corporation for National and Community Service, says that 63.4 million adult Americans­—nearly 27 percent of the population—volunteered to help charitable causes last year. That’s an increase from 2008 of roughly 1.6 million volunteers, the largest single-year jump since 2003…

>> Read the Full Article at The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Colleges and universities can apply to receive up to 100 trees for a student service-learning project on campus during the 2010/2011 school year.

Visit www.arbordaynow.org for complete details and eligibility requirements.

Applications will be accepted through July 16, 2010.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with some introductory remarks this afternoon. On behalf of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the Obama administration, let me welcome you to the White House. It is an honor and privilege to bring such a distinguished group of scholars and religious leaders together to scale and strengthen interfaith collaborations at our colleges and universities. Many of you represent the best practices in doing so, but we need to find ways to scale what works, all for the purpose of increasing domestic and global partnerships that bring people from diverse faiths, cultures, histories and belief systems to a common ground that will benefit society.

Such partnerships are essential to what President Obama and Secretary Duncan call our “cradle to career agenda.” Currently, too many of our students are not adequately prepared for school at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. More than 25% of America’s children are not ready for kindergarten. Only 75% of American students are completing high school on time. And we estimate there are over 90 million Americans with basic or below basic literacy skills.  That includes everyone from high school dropouts to immigrants, ex-offenders and dislocated workers.  It includes inner-city and rural communities, as well as small and mid-size cities that are struggling in today’s economy. The meaningful contributions of interfaith partnerships can help us not only address these issues but also establish a broader understanding among students about why their success is important to their communities. At our 6000 college and university campuses we know that community service connects students to the larger agenda of the public good.

By this, I mean that a shared understanding of the value of collaborating across diverse backgrounds of race, culture and religion binds a country and, in turn, creates the social cohesion that is sorely needed for countries to prosper together.
Our universities, 4-year colleges and community colleges have long been regarded as centers for transformational change, places where America’s social movements often have their origins.
The Campus Compact which began 25 years ago is a great example of the kind of transformational change already underway. Campus Compact is a national coalition of more than 1,100 college and university presidents—representing some 6 million students—who are committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education.

Started by the presidents of Brown, Georgetown and Stanford with the president of the Education Commission of the States, this organization has as its purpose campus-based civic engagement by sharing knowledge and resources with their communities, creating local development initiatives, and supporting service and service-learning efforts in areas such as K-12 education, health care, the environment, hunger/homelessness, literacy, and senior services.

More than 98% of Campus Compact member campuses have one or more community partnerships, and more than 90% include service or civic engagement in their mission statements, all with the goal to improve community life and educate students for civic and social responsibility.

Another organization that will be very helpful to your agenda is the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Last September, they released a report on civic responsibility that identified a wide gap between campus aspirations and student experiences of civic learning and action.

They noted that “as we witness daily the challenges of advancing civil dialogue on important public issues, it is encouraging that across all four of the campus groups surveyed, individuals on a wide array of college campuses strongly agree that civic engagement and learning should be an essential—not optional—outcome of a good college education…We have a long way to go, but we also have many good practices to build on to increase students’ civic knowledge and capacity.”

While 58 percent of students surveyed strongly agreed that contributing to a larger community should be a major focus of their institutions, only 41.5 percent strongly agreed that contributing to a larger community currently is a major focus at their college or university.

About half of all faculty and 45 percent of students who were surveyed strongly agreed that their campus promotes the value of contributing to the community.  However, only 37.7 percent of faculty and 40.4 percent of students strongly agree that their campus actively promotes awareness of U.S. social, political, and economic issues. This is definitely an area that is fertile ground for advancing the partnership and creating the transformational change that is envisioned here today.

Let me share an example of the systemic change that can happen when interfaith service partners come together with higher education. Karen Gross, president of Southern Vermont College who is in the audience today, leads an intimate liberal arts institution of 500 students. Sixty-one percent of SVC’s students are first-generation; 46% qualify for federal student aid and are Pell eligible. Last year, the faculty decided to redesign the comparative religions course by partnering with the local interfaith council. Seven members of the interfaith council co-taught the course with an SVC professor, addressing the requirements of the course from the perspectives of their individual religions.

On the first day of class, all of the members came in religious dress and began the course with a shared meditation, each sharing the respective meditations from their religions. The Buddhist priest sat on the floor; the Rabbi davoned; and so forth. During the semester, students traveled to see the “sacred spaces” of each religion represented. At the end of the course, in their evaluations, students said they gained a profound appreciation of the beliefs of different faiths and even the diversity within a single faith. They were introduced to different perspectives on how religious leaders view their mission and purpose; how they define the common good and build understanding within and across their religious communities and secular communities. Students also said they would have liked to hear more about the religious challenges facing the interfaith council members.

I call this an example of systemic change because the comparative religions course is not a one-time, short-term solution. Faculty are clearly invested in this course; students benefited tremendously; and the institution will offer the course in the future.

President Obama has set a goal for America to have the best educated, most competitive workforce in the world by 2020. To accomplish this goal, we will need to bring more than 8 million students into American higher education beyond the expected student population growth between now and then.

A great opportunity now exists to work in partnership that will enable students to expand opportunities for civic engagement and community service through the interfaith collaborations at our colleges and universities.

Thank you for your work to foster and deepen educational opportunities for students, especially those of the faith communities you all represent here today.